


Nightingale

by phroobin



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Fluff, Gay, Good Omens References, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Men Loving Men, Oblivious, Queer Themes, Romance, Romantic Fluff, Slow Burn, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2020-04-12 10:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19130551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phroobin/pseuds/phroobin
Summary: For an angel like Aziraphale, 6000 years was nothing. It was a blink of an eye. Or rather it would have been, if not for a strange niggling sensation caused by a demon that went by the name of A.J. Crowley. 6000 years feels much, much longer when you’ve been hopelessly in love with the enemy, and that enemy insists on calling you angel at every given opportunity and scheduling little lunches at The Ritz.





	Nightingale

t was a nice day.  
                  Aziraphale, Principality, had been on Earth since the beginning and he had to admit that there had been a good number of nice days since then, though these were sprinkled in amongst a lot more not-so-nice days because, of all the places he could have settled, he had eventually chosen London. So many centuries in the UK, and he was still thrilled when the sun decided to shine[1].  
                  Realistically speaking, 6000 years would be considered a long time by most people’s standards. By a mayfly’s, 6000 years is incomprehensible[2]. By a human’s, it could easily have been described as “a lifetime”, but this phrase would be incorrect; unless one is born of supernatural stock, a lifetime by human standards is very rarely over 120[3] years old. For an angel like Aziraphale, 6000 years was nothing. It was a blink of an eye. Or rather it _would_ have been, if not for a strange niggling sensation caused by a demon[4] that went by the name of A.J. Crowley.  
                  6000 years feels much, much longer when you’ve been hopelessly in love with the enemy for as long as you can remember, and that enemy insists on calling you angel at every given opportunity and scheduling little lunches at The Ritz.

■

If you were to trace it back, the spark had been there since the first moment they’d met in the Garden of Eden. It had been a crackle between them, electricity jumping from one to the other like a Tesla coil (which, of course, had not been invented yet) as Crowley had cracked a joke and made Aziraphale smile.  
                  He should have known he was done for then, really, but it was the incident in 1941 that had made him realise how truly wrecked he was. Trying to double-cross two Nazis[5] in the middle of the Blitz had caused a spot of bother that had almost turned into an inconvenient discorporation and a lot of paperwork. Crowley had literally walked across consecrated ground and redirected German bombers to save him. Aziraphale was giddy with appreciation that night, but it wasn’t until the demon had handed him back books he thought destroyed that he truly understood the gravity of the situation; somewhere along the way, over crepes in France, wine in Rome, and cakes in various tea rooms over the years, he had let himself fall.  
                  Of course, the whole Antichrist business had not helped Aziraphale one bit.  
                  Pining over a certain somebody is much, much easier when that certain somebody isn’t asking you to meet up in covert locations, or pinning you against the wall of an ex-convent once run by satanic nuns, or phoning you constantly for updates, or _asking you to run away to another galaxy with them_ [6].  
                  “We’re on _OUR_ side,” Crowley had hissed and, when Aziraphale heard the desperation[7] colouring his words, it had taken every ounce of angelic resolve not to just melt into the man’s arms and agree to anything and everything that came out of his mouth, consequences be damned.

■

Crowley, too, had been harbouring a crush over the centuries. For the most part, he had managed to ignore it successfully, but it had reared its head fully one evening in 1967 and life had never been the same. He had been planning a robbery in a desperate attempt to procure insurance. The meeting had wrapped up and Crowley was looking forward to just getting home and encouraging[8] his houseplants, when Aziraphale had appeared, without his usual warning, in the passenger seat of the Bentley.  
                  “What are you doing here?”  
                  “I needed a word with you,” Aziraphale said, voice clipped. “I work in Soho. I hear things. And I hear that you’re setting up a... a caper. To rob a church.” His words were laced with a hint of fury. Crowley turned away, jaw set, and prepared for what he assumed would be an argument of biblical proportions. He was surprised when the next words from the angel's mouth were gentle.  
                  “Crowley, it’s too dangerous. Holy water won’t just kill your body. It will destroy you completely.”  
                  “You told me what you think 105 years ago.”  
                  Aziraphale cut him off quickly. “And I haven’t changed my mind. But I can’t have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So you can call off the robbery.” When Crowley turned to look at him again, the angel was holding the most hideous[9] tartan flask with a grim determination. The demon surveyed him properly from behind his sunglasses, noting the way Aziraphale gripped the thermos so tightly that his knuckles went white. His plump face was etched with concern. It was quite sweet, really, how worried the angel could be about him considering the number of times he’d protested that they weren’t friends.                  
                  “Don’t go unscrewing the cap.”  
                  Crowley took the tartan atrocity from him carefully with both hands, momentarily stunned and operating on autopilot. It took a few beats for his tongue to untie itself.  
                  “This is the real thing?”  
                  “The holiest.”  
                  “After everything you said...” The demon fought back the adoration in his tone as Aziraphale nodded solemnly, his blue eyes flicking back and forth from the thermos to Crowley’s face. Crowley’s heart surged.  
                  “Should I say thank you?”  
                  “Best not to.”  
                  “Well, can I drop you somewhere?”  
                  “No, thank you.” His face must have fallen because Aziraphale’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “Oh, don’t look so disappointed. Perhaps one day we can, I don’t know... go for a picnic. Dine at the Ritz”. He smiled softly, as if amused by the idea.  
                  “I’ll give you a lift. Anywhere you want to go.”  
                  There was a pause. Aziraphale closed his eyes tiredly. “You go too fast for me, Crowley,” he said, opening the car door and disappearing into the throngs of people moving through Soho. Crowley was left alone with nothing but the little thermos and a strange breaking feeling in his chest.  
                  It wouldn’t be until later, when he lay in bed, troubled by the way Aziraphale’s words had cut him to the core, that he realised he had fallen in an entirely new way. He wondered, idly, if this time Aziraphale might fall to meet him. What a world that would be, eh?

■

And now, here they were. Sat on a bench in the Oxfordshire town of Tadfield, passing a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape back and forth and waiting for the bus. Adam, the Antichrist, had reshaped reality. The four horsemen had been defeated. The Apocalypse had been averted.  
                  Things could go back to normal.  
                  Or as normal as they could be.             
                  “Angel...” Crowley’s voice cut through Aziraphale’s thoughts.  
                  "Mmm?"  
                  “What if the Almighty planned it like this all along? From the very Beginning?”  
                   “Could have. I wouldn’t put it past her.”  
                  Aziraphale took a long swig of the Pape. He felt nervous and somewhat out of sorts. Granted, he often felt like this - it came with the territory of being an angel on Earth in a body that, while familiar, still felt a little like a suit that pinched in a few spots he’d rather they didn’t[10]. This was different, though. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he suspected it might have had something to do with the intensity of Crowley’s gaze, which he could feel boring into him even beneath those blasted sunglasses. Needless to say, Aziraphale was quite grateful for the distraction of the delivery driver, followed by the bus coming down the street.  
                  “Oh, there it is,” he exclaimed, pointing to the vehicle. He squinted a little, cursing his less-than-divine eyesight. Years of reading in the half-light of candles in the bookshop had given way to short-sightedness[11]. “It... says Oxford on the front”.  
                  There was a pause as Crowley put the bottle to his lips and shrugged.  
                  “Yeah, but he’ll drive to London anyway. He just won’t know why”.  
                  “I suppose I should get him to drop me off at the bookshop”.  
                  Crowley almost gave himself whiplash as he turned to look at Aziraphale. His voice was soft - the softest the angel had ever heard him - and reality came flooding back before the next words had even left Crowley’s lips.  
                  “It burned down, remember?”  
                  Aziraphale’s eyes fluttered closed in pain, and he bit the inside of his lip to stop himself crying out. His hands clenched in his lap and he turned his gaze away, only looking back when he felt the cool touch of Crowley’s fingers on his wrist.   
                  “You can stay at my place,” the demon murmured, not realising he was going to say it until it was too late. He tried desperately to regain his nonchalant composure. “If you like.”  
                  The air was heavy, and the seconds between the offer and Aziraphale’s response felt like years.  
                  “I... I don’t think my side would like that”.  
                  “You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do,” Crowley said, overcompensating on the confidence and hoping that Aziraphale couldn’t hear the tremor in his voice[12]. Aziraphale’s heart fucking ascended, and his body thrummed with realisation and the pure untapped potentiality of what Crowley was saying. After 6000 years of pining, he had never dared to even entertain the idea that Crowley could have felt the same way. Suddenly the little touches and looks, the lunches, the conversations spanning eras, everything made sense. They’d been learning an intricate dance, in secret, in the dark, with no instructions; they had been courting for centuries without realising.  
                  “We’re on our own side,” Crowley said, shifting almost imperceptibly towards Aziraphale. His fingers moved gently (carefully, timidly) down the pale expanse of wrist and over the back of Aziraphale’s hand, touching him as if the golden-haired man was the holiest thing he had ever had his hands on[13]. He felt the angel tense, then relax, and took the opportunity to slip their fingers together.  
                  “I-I didn’t... I never... I had no idea,” Aziraphale stammered, blue eyes searching Crowley’s face. “I thought it was just me.”  
                  “It wasn’t, Angel. It was always there. All those millennia and only you for company? I was doomed from the start. We both were.”  
                  Aziraphale squeezed Crowley’s hand gently as if testing that he was really here.  
                  “There’s nothing... there’s nothing stopping us now. No Heaven, no Hell, no End Times. Just us,” he said softly. He pressed his forehead against Crowley’s, marvelling at how his skin tingled at the contact. “We could make a go of things. Is that what humans say?”  
                  “Oh, shut up,” Crowley said fondly, tipping his head up and stopping Aziraphale with a kiss. When their lips finally met, aeons of uncertainty melted away. It was as if they had once been one person; two halves of a whole that had finally been re-joined.  
                  “Saints preserve me,” Aziraphale had murmured, touching his elegantly manicured fingers to his lips as they pulled away from one another. He was bright red, but he suddenly understood why humans put so much stock in kissing. It was bloody glorious. Or, he reasoned, it was if it was Crowley he was kissing.  
                  “I don’t think the saints can save you now, Angel,” Crowley whispered in reverence, sounding slightly stunned.  
                  “Well, I’ll be damned then,” Aziraphale said. There was a pause as he brought Crowley’s knuckles to his lips, their fingers still intertwined, and Crowley grinned.  
                  “I told you it wasn’t so bad.”  
                  “It’s not. But only as long as I’m damned with you.”

■

[](http://www.instagram.com/stoffberg) 

 

* * *

[1] It’s important to note that Aziraphale was not excited about the sun himself. What he was excited about was that nice weather meant people would go to the beach, or to the park, or anywhere that was not his little Soho bookshop and so he would be left alone.      
[2] This is because the mayfly’s life cycle lasts 24 hours, and they live only to reproduce. If Aziraphale wasn’t labouring under the belief that everything was part of the ineffable plan, he would swear that God was making some kind of joke that nobody had quite understood yet.  
[3] With the exception of one Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived to the ripe old age of 122 before passing away in 1997 in Arles, France.    
[4] Crowley’s descent from God’s good books and into hell’s bad ones had been less of a fall, and more of a saunter in a vague downward direction. He hadn’t _meant_ to, after all. He’d just been part of the wrong crowd and realised too late.  
[5] Three Nazis, technically, but he hadn’t realised that at first now, had he?  
[6] Twice.  
[7] It could easily have been temptation, but after several thousand years Aziraphale knew how to identify that by a subtle tilt of Crowley’s head or a slight change in intonation.  
[8] Encouraging was not the right word. Scaring shitless would have been more of an apt description.  
[9] Hideous by Crowley’s standards, at least. Aziraphale happened to think it quite stylish, and he was rather upset that he would no longer get to use it for his cocoa.  
[10] Containing a celestial being in a human body isn’t an easy feat. There had been several millennia of testing, and this had been the best outcome. It’s best not to question what happened with the failures, really.  
[11] He could have fixed this, but he had had too many strongly worded letters about unnecessary miracles that he’d just decided to buy some glasses.  
[12] He could.  
[13] He was.

**Author's Note:**

> Good Omens has been my favourite novel since I was 14 or 15, and the TV adaptation was so good and so gay that I couldn't not write something about the Ineffable Husbands to celebrate my love for this fandom. I'm so excited to see so many people joining us in the end times, and so many beautiful new fics, so I hope my meagre offering is enough. Like all writers, validation sustains me so if you enjoyed reading please drop me a comment or a kudos - it's really appreciated!
> 
> The artwork at the end is a piece I commissioned and is by the wonderful Miles Stoffberg (who can be found on Instagram @stoffberg), which I think goes perfectly. His work is gorgeous, and his commissions are open right now, so please go and check him out!


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